Why read Pilgrims and Sultans?

Book cover of Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj Under the Ottomans

Book description

The pilgrimage to Mecca - the hajj - is a major aspect of the Islamic religion, yet little has been written about its history or of the conditions under which thousands of pilgrims from far flung regions of the Islamic world travelled to the heart of the Arabian peninsula. This…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Pilgrims and Sultans as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sumanto Al Qurtuby

Author

Concerning the study of the hajj (i.e. Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca), I consider this book is pioneering primarily because it utilizes original sources and documentation left by Ottoman administrators to depict and recreate uneasy experiences of the pilgrims’ everyday life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of Arabia. During these centuries, Mecca was under the control and authority of the Ottoman sultans, and the hajj pilgrimage was an extremely tough journey: long, arduous, and fraught with danger. This work has contributed to our understandings of the pilgrims’ conditions and mundane activities and the sultans’ policies of the pilgrimage.

From Sumanto's list on Islam, travel, and travelers in Arabia.